Dear Michael,
It would be interesting to hear more about what the "normal standards of acceptable scholarship" are that Foucault dispenses with in this work. I once heard that the famous ships of fools never in fact existed. Is this true? Did he just make it up? And if so, is this the sort of issue you are referring to when you say he suspends the normal standards of acceptable scholarship?
I ask because you don't really give any indication in your post. If it is a matter of factual errors, this would be serious indeed. I hope that the new addition will provide copious references that will allow such issues to be clarified. Or is your objection more of a methodological one? If this is the case, I hope your new translation will include some kind of introductory essay making your objections clear or explaining how the new translation provides insight into this question.
But in the meantime, it would be most interesting to hear at least a precis of what you are alluding to in your post to this list.
Regards,
Nate Roberts
At 07:15 AM 6/20/2005, you wrote:
Have you seen the <http://www.lcurve.org/>L-Curve?
It would be interesting to hear more about what the "normal standards of acceptable scholarship" are that Foucault dispenses with in this work. I once heard that the famous ships of fools never in fact existed. Is this true? Did he just make it up? And if so, is this the sort of issue you are referring to when you say he suspends the normal standards of acceptable scholarship?
I ask because you don't really give any indication in your post. If it is a matter of factual errors, this would be serious indeed. I hope that the new addition will provide copious references that will allow such issues to be clarified. Or is your objection more of a methodological one? If this is the case, I hope your new translation will include some kind of introductory essay making your objections clear or explaining how the new translation provides insight into this question.
But in the meantime, it would be most interesting to hear at least a precis of what you are alluding to in your post to this list.
Regards,
Nate Roberts
At 07:15 AM 6/20/2005, you wrote:
The long awaited unabridged english translation of the
original french text 'Histoire de la folie a l'age
classique' is due for release this week by Routledge
publishing; englished as 'History of Madness in the
Classical age'.
I, along with Andrew Scull, although for very
different reasons, am convinced that its reception
will be an unfavourable, even hostile one. Scull
believed- hoped- that a full length english
translation of the original french text would finally
put it, and the controversy it spawned, to rest by
bringing to light in the anglo-saxon world the
inadequacies of its arguments, "resting", as it does,
"on the shakiest of scholary foudations", "riddled
with errors of fact and interpretation", and thus
presenting a "grave danger" to "credulous" young minds
by alienating them from 'the truth'. I, with Allen
Megil, see it as "unacceptable" to "normal schools of
scholary standards" precisely because it does not
accept, from the outset, prior to any analysis, the
normal standards of acceptable scholarship, but
rather, holds them in abeyance and even calls them
into question (as an effect attendent upon it, of the
order of 'results'). In any case, "its appearance will
doubtless provoke a reassessment of Fouaults work on
the history of psychiatry."
Michael Bibby
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Have you seen the <http://www.lcurve.org/>L-Curve?